«Girl friend, I suppose,» said the chief. «That does make a month into a hell of a long drought between letters.»
Greenstein flushed and nodded earnestly. «We’re going to get married when my two years here are up,» he said.
«That’s what most of ’em plan on. A lot of saved-up pay and valuable experience—sure, you’re fixed for life.» It was on Herries’ tongue to add that the life might be a short one, but he suppressed the impulse.
Loneliness dragged at his nerves. There was no one waiting in the future for him. It was just as well, he told himself during the endless nights. Hard enough to sleep without worrying about some woman in the same age as the cobalt bomb.
«I’ve got her picture here, if you’d like to see it,» offered Greenstein shyly.
His hand was already on his wallet. A tired grin slid up Herries’ mouth. «Right next to your… er… heart, eh?» he murmured.
Greenstein blinked, threw back his head, and laughed. The field had not heard so merry a laugh in a long while. Nevertheless, he showed the other man a pleasant-faced, unspectacular girl.
Out in the swamp, something hooted and threshed about.
Impulsively, Herries asked: «How do you feel about this operation, Sam?»
«Huh? Why, it’s… interesting work. And a good bunch of guys.»
«Even Symonds?»
«Oh he means well.»
«We could have more fun if he didn’t bunk with us.»
«He can’t help being… old,» said Greenstein.
Herries glanced at the boy. «You know,» he said, «you’re the first man in the Jurassic Period who’s had a good word for Ephraim Symonds. I appreciate that. I’d better not say whether or not I share the sentiment, but I appreciate it.»
His boots sludged ahead, growing heavier with each step. «You still haven’t answered my first question,» he resumed after a while. «I didn’t ask if you enjoyed the work, I asked how you feel about it. Its purpose. We have the answers here to questions which science has been asking—will be asking—for centuries. And yet, except for a couple of under-equipped paleobiologists, who aren’t allowed to publish their findings, we’re doing nothing but rape the earth in an age before it has even conceived us.»
Greenstein hesitated. Then, with a surprising dryness: «You’re getting too psychoanalytic for me, I’m afreud.»
Herries chuckled. The day seemed a little more alive, all at once. «Touché! Well, I’ll rephrase Joe Polansky’s question of last night. Do you think the atomic standoff in our home era—to which this operation is potentially rather important—is stable?»
Greenstein considered for a moment. «No,» he admitted. «Deterrence is a stopgap till something better can be worked out.»
«They’ve said as much since it first began. Nothing has been done. It’s improbable that anything will be. Ole Olson describes the international situation as a case of the irresistibly evil force colliding with the immovably stupid object.»
«Ole likes to use extreme language,» said Greenstein. «So tell me, what else could our side do?»
«I wish to God I had an answer.» Herries sighed. «Pardon me. We avoid politics here, as much as possible; we’re escapists in several senses of the word. But frankly, I sound out new men. I was doing it to you. Because in spite of what Washington thinks, a Q clearance isn’t all that a man needs to work here.»
«Did I pass?» asked Greenstein, a bit too lightly.
«Sure. So far. You may wish you hadn’t. The burning issue today is not whether to tolerate ‘privileged neutralism,’ or whatever the latest catchword is up there. It’s: Did I get the armament I’ve been asking for?»
The transceiving station bulked ahead. It was a long corrugated-iron shed, but dwarfed by the tanks which gleamed behind it. Every one of those was filled, Herries knew. Today they would pump their crude oil into the future. Or rather, if you wanted to be exact, their small temporal unit would establish a contact and the gigantic main projector in the twentieth century would then «suck» the liquid toward itself. And in return the compound would get—food, tools, weapons, supplies, and mail. Herries prayed there would be at least one howitzer… and no VIP’s. That Senator a few months ago!
For a moment, contemplating the naked ugliness of tanks and pumps and shed, Herries had a vision of this one place stretching through time. It would be abandoned some day, when the wells were exhausted, and rain and jungle would rapidly eat the last thin traces of man. Later would come the sea, and then it would be dry land again, a cold prairie scoured by glacial winds, and then it would grow warm and… on and on, a waste of years until the time projector was invented and the great machine stood on this spot. And afterward? Herries didn’t like to think what might be here after that.
Symonds was already present. He popped rabbit-like out of the building, a coded manifest in one hand, a pencil behind his ear: «Good morning, Mr. Herries,» he said. His tone gave its usual impression of stiff self-importance.
«’Morning. All set in there?» Herries went in to see for himself. A spatter of rain began to fall, noisy on the metal roof. The technicians were at their posts and reported clear. Outside, one by one, the rest of the men were drifting up. This was mail day, and little work would be done for the remainder of it.
Herries laid the sack of letters to the future inside the shed in its proper spot. His chronometer said one minute to go. «Stand by!» At the precise time, there was a dim whistle in the air and an obscure pulsing glow. Meters came to life. The pumps began to throb, driving crude oil through a pipe which faced open-ended into the shed. Nothing emerged that Herries could see. Good. Everything in order. The other end of the pipe was a hundred million years in the future. The mail sack vanished with a small puff, as air rushed in where it had waited. Herries went back outside.
«Ah… excuse me.»
He turned around, with a jerkiness that told him his nerves were half unraveled. «Yes?» he snapped.
«May I see you a moment?» asked Symonds. «Alone?» And the pale eyes behind the glasses said it was not a request but an order.
Herries nodded curtly, swore at the men for hanging around idle when the return shipment wasn’t due for hours, and led the way to a porch tacked onto one side of the transceiving station. There were some camp stools beneath it. Symonds hitched up his khakis as if they were a business suit and sat primly down, his thin hands flat on his knees.
«A special shipment is due today,» Symonds said. «I was not permitted to discuss it until the last moment.»
Herries curled his mouth. «Go tell Security that the Kremlin won’t be built for a hundred million years. Maybe they haven’t heard.»
«What no one knew, no one could put into a letter home.»
«The mail is censored anyway. Our friends and relatives think we’re working somewhere in Asia.» Herries spat into the mud and said: «And in another year the first lot of recruits are due home. Plan to shoot them as they emerge, so they can’t possibly talk in their sleep?»
Symonds seemed too humorless even to recognize sarcasm. He pursed his lips and declared: «Some secrets need be kept for a few months only; but within that period, they must be kept.»
«Okay, okay. Let’s hear what’s coming today.»
«I am not allowed to tell you that. But about half the total tonnage will be crates marked Top Secret. These are to remain in the shed, guarded night and day by armed men.» Symonds pulled a slip of paper from his jacket. «These men will be assigned to that duty, each one taking eight hours a week.»
Herries glanced at the names. He did not know everyone here by sight, though he came close, but he recognized several of these. «Brave, discreet, and charter subscribers to National Review,» he murmured. «Teacher’s pets. All right. Though I’ll have to curtail exploration correspondingly—either that, or else cut down on their guards and sacrifice a few extra lives.»